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PUBLISHED BY THE AMERICAN LITERARY BUREAU 

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Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1872, in the Office of the 
Librarian of Congress at Washington. 



— • • > •..- 






antes 





AMES ANTHONY F.ROUDE, the historian, was 
born at Totness, Devonshire, England, and is 
now fifty-four years old. He was the son of R. 
H. Froude, Archdeacon of Totness, and was edu- 
cated at Westminster and Oxford, where he early developed 
abilities which forecast his future brilliant career. 

He has written " The Lives of the English Saints," 
" Shadows of the Clouds," " The Nemesis of Faith," " Short 
Studies on Great Subjects," and other works. He is now 
engaged upon a History of Ireland. 

But the great work on which his reputation mainly rests, 
and which will carry that reputation down to posterity side 
by side with that of Hume aud Macaulay, is the " History 
of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Eliza- 
beth." Few historical works have had such a sale (Scrib- 
ner & Co. have sold over one hundred and fifty thousand in 
the United States alone), and probably no other one ever 
caused so much warmth of feeling and angry discussion. 
This was principally owing to the fact that Mr. Froude 's 
estimate of the characters of those two great historical 
personages, Henry VIII. and Mary Stuart, was directly con- 
trary to the estimates of all previous historians, and opposed 





§>£ ■ -= 

I 4 James A 




to the convictions or prejudices of the great mass of the 
- sh people. It is from this work that the selections 
embodied in this pamphlet are taken. 

Mr. Froude has beer I by the American Literary 

Bureau to lecture in this country during the fall and winter 
- 2 — 73 upon the "Relations between England and Ire- 
land " — a theme which has attracted universal attention, 
both in Great Britain and the Unite : 

In view of his presence among us. it is believed I 
"Gems " will be acceptable to all who love to read beautiful 
thought in beautiful langua_. [n electing them the diffi- 
culty has been, among so many gems, to decide which to 
choose. Nor has anv attempt been made to group them 
with reference to their places in history ; they are simply 
separate pearls on one thread. 

In a re-. - h of Mr. Froude. Mr. Justin McCarthy 

"I can I irp ::;;:. od broad differences of 

opinion arising out of his lectures in the United States. I cannot 
imagine their being rece: ...irerence, or failing to hold 

the attention of the public. * * * * He has imagination ; 
pathetic and dramatic instinct which enables a 
man to enter unto the emotions and motives, the likir._ 

f the people of a renetrating 

and thrilling; his language often rises to the dignity of a poetic 
eloquence. The figures he conjures up are always the semblances 
of real men and women. They are never wax-work or lay 
:lothed in words, or purple rags of descrip- 
out with straw into an awkward like :;:e hu- 

man form. The one distinct impression we carry away from 
Frond; is figures." 






a$Ms. 




^T1|C ^Toronation-ilancant of ^tltie IRolcnn. 

GLORIOUS as the spectacle was. perhaps, however, it passed nnhe 
Those eyes were watching all for another object, which now drew 
near. In an open space behind the Constable there was seen approaching 
" a white chariot," drawn by two palfreys in white damask which swept 
the ground, a golden canopy borne above it making music with silver 
bells : and in the chariot sat the observed of all observers, the beautiful 
occasion of all this glittering homage : fortune's plaything of the hour, the 
Queen of England — queen at last '. — borne along upon the waves of this 
sea of. glory, breathing the perfumed incense of greatness which she had 
risked her fair name, her delicacy, her honour, her self-respect, to win : 
and she had won it. 

There she sate, dressed in white tissue robes, her fair hair flowing loose 
over her shoulders, and her temples circled with a light coronet of gold 
and diamonds — most beautiful — loveliest — most favored, perhaps, as she 
seemed at that hour, of all England's daughters. Alas ! " within the hol- 
low round of that coronet — 

" Kept Death his court, and there the antick sate. 
Scoffing her state and grinning at her pomp ; 
Allowing her a little breath, a little scene 
To monarchize, be feared, and kill with looks. 
Infusing her with self and vain conceit. 
As if the flesh which walled about her life 
Were biass impregnable ; and humored thus. 
Bored thro' her castle walls ; and farewell. Queen !" 

Eatal gift of greatness ! s<» dangerous ever '. so more than dangerous in 
those tremendous times when the fountains are broken loose of the great 
deeps of thought, and nations are in the throes of revolution ; when 
ancient order and law and traditions are splitting in the social earthquake . 
and as the opposing forces wrestle to and fro, those unhappy ones who 
stand out above the crowd become the symbols of the struggle, and fall 
the victims of its alternating fortunes. And what if into an unsteady 





Gems from Froude. 




heart and brain, intoxicated with splendor, the outward chaos should find 
its way, converting the poor silly soul into an image of the same confu- 
sion, — if conscience should be deposed from her high place, and the Pan- 
dora box be broken loose of passions and sensualities and follies ; and at 
length there be nothing left of all which man or woman ought to value, 
save hope of God's forgiveness. 

Three short years have yet to pass, and again, on a summer morning, 
Queen Anne Boleyn will leave the tower of London, — not radiant then 
with beauty on a gay errand of coronation, but a poor wandering ghost, on 
a sad tragic errand, from which she will never more return, passing away 
out of an earth where she may stay no longer, into a presence where, nev- 
ertheless, we know that all is well — for all of us — and therefore for her. 

But let us not cloud her short-lived sunshine with the shadow of the 
future. She went on in her loveliness, the peeresses following in their car- i 
riages, with the royal guard in their rear. In Fenchurch-street she was ! 
met by the children of the city schools ; and at the corner of Gracechurch- | 
street a masterpiece had been prepared of the pseudo-classic art, then so J 
fashionable, by the merchants of the Styllyard. A Mount Parnassus had 
been constructed, and a Helicon fountain upon it playing into a basin with 
four jets of Rhenish wine. On the top of the mountain sat Apollo with 
Calliope at his feet, and on either side the remaining muses, holding lutes 
or harps, and singing each of them some " posy " or epigram in praise of 
the queen, which was presented, after it had been sung, written in letters 
of gold. 

From Gracechurch-street the procession passed to Leadenhall, where \ 
there was a spectacle in better taste, of the old English Catholic kind, 
quaint perhaps and forced, but truly and even beautifully emblematic. 
There was again a " little mountain " which was hung with red and white 
roses ; a gold ring was placed on the summit, on which, as the queen ap- 
peared, a white falcon was made to " descend as out of the sky," — " and 
then incontinent came down an angel with great melody, and set a close 
crown of gold upon the falcon's head ; and in the same pageant sat Saint 
Anne with all her issue beneath her ; and Mary Cleophas with her four 
children, of the which children one made a goodly oration to the queen of 
the fruitfulness of St. Anne, trusting that like fruit should come of her." 

With such "pretty conceits," at that time the honest tokens of an English 
welcome, the new queen was received by the citizens of London. These 
scenes must be multiplied by the number of the streets, where some fresh 





Gems from Froude. 




fancy met her at every turn. To preserve the festivities from flagging, 
every fountain and conduit within the walls ran all day with wine ; the 
bells of every steeple were ringing ; children lay in wait with songs, and 
ladies with posies, in which all the resources of fantastic extravagance were 
exhausted ; and thus in an unbroken triumph — and to outward appearance 
received with the warmest affection — she passed under Temple Bar, down 
the Strand, by Charing Cross to Westminster Hall. The king was not 
with her throughout the day ; nor did he intend to be with her in any part 
of the ceremony. She was to reign without a rival, the undisputed sove- 
reign of the hour. 

Saturday being passed in showing herself to the people, she retired for 
the night to " the king's manour house at Westminster," where she slept. 
On the following morning, between eight and nine o'clock, she returned to 
the hall, where the Lord Mayor, the city council, and the peers were again 
assembled, and took her place on the high dais at the top of the stairs 
under the cloth of state ; while the bishops, the abbots, and the monks of 
the abbey formed in the area. A railed way had been laid with carpets 
across Palace Yard and the Sanctuary to the abbey gates, and when all 
was ready, preceded by the peers in their robes of parliament, the Knights 
of the Garter in the dress of the order, she swept out under her canopy, 
the bishops and the monks "solemnly singing." The train was borne by 
the old Duchess of Norfolk, her aunt, the Bishops of London and Win- 
chester on either side " bearing up the lappets of her robe." The Earl of 
Oxford carried the crown on its cushion immediately before her. She was 
dressed in purple velvet furred with ermine, her hair escaping loose, as she 
usually wore it, under a wreath of diamonds. 

On entering the abbey, she was led to the coronation chair, where she 
sat while the train fell into their places, and the preliminaries of the cere- 
monial were despatched. Then she was conducted up to the high altar, 
and anointed Queen of England, and she received from the hands of Cran- 
mer, fresh come in haste from Dunstable, with the last words of his sen- 
tence upon Catherine scarcely silent upon his lips, the golden scepter, and 
St. Edward's Crown. 

Did any twinge of remorse, any pang of painful recollection, pierce at 
that moment the incense of glory which she was inhaling V Did any vision 
flit across her of a sad, mourning figure which once had stood where she 
was standing, now desolate, neglected, sinking into the darkening twilight 
of a life cut short by sorrow ? Who can tell? At such a time, that iiirure 






- 




would have weighed heavily upon a noble mind, and a wise mind would 
have been taught by the thought of it. that, although life be fleeting as a 
dream, it is long enough to experience strange vicissitudes of fortune. 

But Amu- Boleyn was not noble and was not wise. — too probably she felt 
nothing but the delicious, all-absorbing, all-intoxicating present; and if 
that plain, suffering face presented itself to her memory at all, we may fear 
that it was rather as a foil to her own surpassing loveliness. Two years 
later she was able to exult over Catherine's death ; she is not likely to have 
thought of her with gentler feelings in the first glow and flush of triumph. 



x *f;iil of $Holscg. 



TP)UT the 1 toning gth was arrived; slowly the hand had 

-*— crawled along the dial-plate: slowly, as if the event would never 
come : and wrong was heaped on wrong : and oppression cried, and it 
seemed as if no ear had heard its voice : till the measure of the circle was 
at length fulfilled, the Angers touched the hour, and as the strokes of the 
great hammer rang out above the nation, in an instant the mighty fabric 
of iniquity was shivered into ruins Wolsey had dreamed that it might 
still stand, self-reformed as he hoped to see it : but in his dread lest any 
hands but those oi friends should touch the work, he had " prolonged its 
sickly days." waiting for the convenient season which was not to be : he 
had put off the meeting of Parliament, knowing that if Parliament were 
would be unable to resist the pressure which would be 
brought to bear upon him ; and in the impatient minds of the people he 
had identified himself with the evils which he alone, for the few last years 
had hindered from falling. At length he had fallen himself, and his dis- 
grace was celebrated in London with enthusiastic rejoicing as the inaugura- 
tion of the new . 



jFanatits. 

ri^HE surest testimony to wise and moderate measure? is the disapproval 

— 1— rif fan«tiAB .if -ill L-in.^^ 



of fanatic* of all kinds. 






Gems from Froude. 




fflut 50 *lt* cult j| of ([Inilcr.stamliug a flrcvious ^gc. 

T N periods like the present, when knowledge is every day extending, and 

-*- the habits and thoughts of mankind are perpetually changing under the 
influence of new discoveries, it is no easy matter to throw ourselves back 
into a time in which, for centuries, the European world grew upon a single 
type, in which the forms of the father s thoughts were the forms of the 
son's, and the late descendant was occupied in treading into paths the foot- 
prints of his distant ancestors. So absolutely has change become the law 
of our present condition, that it is identified with energy and moral health ; 
to cease to change is to lose one's place in the race ; and to pass away from 
off the earth with the same convictions which we found when we entered 
it, is to have missed the best object for which we now seem to exist. 

It has been, however, with the race of men as it has been with the planet 
which we inhabit. As we look back over history, we see times of change 
and progress alternating with other times when life and thought have set- 
tled into permanent forms ; when mankind, as if by common consent, have 
ceased to seek for increase of knowledge, and, contented with what they 
possess, have endeavored to make use of it for purposes of moral cultiva- 
tion. Such was the condition of the Greeks through many ages before the 
Persian war ; such was that of the Romans till the world revenged itself 
upon its conquerors by the introduction among them of the habits of the 
conquered ; and such again became the condition of Europe when the 
Northern nations grafted the religion and the laws of the Western empire 
on their own hardy natures, and shaped out that wonderful spiritual and 
political organization which remained unshaken for a thousand years. 



lllaiu Speech, 



MEN engaged in a mortal strife usually speak plainly. Blunt words 
strike home ; and the euphuism which, in more ingenious ages, dis- 
covers that men mean the same thing when they say opposite things, was 
as yet unknown or unappreciated. 





®€>- 



1) 



10 Gems from Froude. 




^\\t Wscndia^ af| Sir ||ltoma3 Mp*\** 

ri^IIE scaffold had been awkwardly erected, and shook as he placed his 
-■- foot upon the ladder. " See me safe up," he said to Kingston ; " For 
my coining down I can shift for myself." He began to speak to the peo- 
ple, but the sheriff begged him not to proceed, and he contented himself 
with asking for their prayers, and desiring them to bear witness for him 
that he died in the faith of the Holy Catholic Church, and a faithful servant 
of God and the king. He then repeated the Miserere psalm on his knees ; 
when he had ended and had risen, the executioner, with an emotion which 
promised ill for the manner in which his part in the tragedy would be 
accomplished, Jbegged his forgiveness. More kissed him. " Thou art to 
do me the greatest benefit that I can receive," he said. " Pluck up thy 
spirit, man, and be not afraid to do thine office. My neck is very short ; 
take heed, therefore, that thou strike not awry for saving of thine honesty." 
The executioner offered to tie his eyes. " I will cover them myself," he 
said ; and binding them in a cloth which he had brought with him, he 
knelt and laid his head upon the block. The fatal stroke was about to 
fall, when he signed for a moment's delay while he moved aside his beard. 
"Pity that should be cut," he murmured; "that has not committed trea- 
son ! " With which strange words, the strangest perhaps ever uttered at 
such a time, the lips most famous through Europe for eloquence and wis- 
dom closed for ever. 

* * * -* * # 

This was the execution of Sir Thomas More, an act which was sounded 
out into the four corners of the earth, and was the world's wonder, as well 
for the circumstances under which it was perpetrated as for the preter- 
natural composure with which it was borne. Something of* his calmness 
may have been due to his natural temperament, something to an unaffected ' 
weariness of a world which in his eyes was plunging into the ruin of the 
latter days. But those fair hues of sunny cheerfulness caught their color 
from the simplicity of his faith ; and never was there a Christian's victory 
over death more grandly evidenced than in that last scene, lighted with its 
lambent humor. 

History will rather dwell upon the incidents of the execution than at- 
tempt a sentence upon those who willed that it should be. 

It was at once most piteous and most inevitable. The hour of retribution 
had come at length, when at the hands of the Roman church was to be 






Gems from Fronde. 1 1 



required all the righteous blood which it had shed, from the blood of Ray- 
mond of Toulouse to the blood of the last victim who had blackened into 
ashes at Smithfield. The voices crying underneath the altar had been 
heard upon the throne of the Most High, and woe to the generation of 
which the dark account had been demanded ! 




Jhihi toivartls <£>otl the jingle lament of all 

HAD it been possible for mankind to sustain themselves upon the sin- 
gle principle, " Fear God and keep his commandments ; for that is 
the whole duty of man," without disguising its simplicity, their history 
would have been painted in far other colors than those which have so long- 
chequered its surface. This, however, has not been given to us ; and per- 
haps it never will be given. As the soul is clothed in flesh, and only thus 
is able to perform its functions in this earth, where it is sent to live ; as the 
thought must find a word before it can pass from mind to mind ; so every 
great truth seeks some body, some outward form in which to exhibit its 
powers. It appears in the world, and men lay hold of it, and represent it 
to themselves, in histories, in forms of words, in sacramental symbols; and 
these things, which in their proper nature are but illustrations, stiffen into 
essential fact, and become part of the reality. So arises, in era after era, 
an outward and mortal expression of the inward immortal life ; and at 
once the old struggle begins to repeat itself between the flesh and the 
spirit, the form and the reality. For awhile the lower tendencies are held 
in check ; the meaning of the symbolism is remembered and fresh ; it is a 
living language, pregnant and suggestive. By and bye, as the mind passes 
into other phases, the meaning is forgotten ; the language becomes a dead 
language; and the living robe of life becomes a winding sheet of corrup- 
tion. The form is represented as everything, the spirit as nothing ; obedi- 
ence is dispensed with ; sin and religion arrange a compromise ; and 
outward observances, or technical inward emotions, are converted into jug- 
glers' tricks, by which men are enabled to enjoy their pleasures and escape 
the penalties of wrong. Then such religion becomes no religion, but a 
falsehood ; and honorable men turn away from it, and fall back in haste 
upon the naked elemental life. 



@# 





Gems from Froude. 



TT was a swift sentence, and swiftly to be executed. Five days were 
-*- allowed him to prepare himself ; and the more austere features of the 
penalty were remitted with some show of pity. He was to die by the axe. 

Mercy was not to be hoped for. It does not seem to have been sought. 
He was past eighty. The earth on the edge of the grave was crumbling 
under his feet ; and death had little to make it fearful. When the last 
morning dawned, he dressed himself carefully — as he said, for his marriage- 
day. The distance to Tower Hill was short. He was able to walk ; and 
he tottered out of the prison-gates, holding in his hand a closed volume of 
the New Testament. The crowd flocked about him, and he was heard to 
pray that, as this book had been his best comfort and companion, so in 
that hour it might give him some special strength, and speak to him as 
from his Lord. Then opening it at a venture, he read : " This is life eter- 
nal, to know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom Thou hast 
sent." It was the answer to his prayer ; and he continued to repeat the 
words as he was led forward. On the scaffold he chanted the Te Deum, 
and then, after a few prayers, knelt down, and meekly laid his head upon 
a pillow where neither care nor fear nor sickness would ever vex it more. 
Many a spectacle of sorrow had been witnessed on that tragic spot, but 
never one more sad than this ; never one more painful to think or speak 
of. When a nation is in the throes of revolution, wild spirits are abroad 
in the storm ; and poor human nature presses blindly forward with the 
burden which is laid upon it, tossing aside the obstacles in its path with a 
recklessness which, in calmer hours, it would fear to contemplate. 



!f)ow < |i^isf a rtnu jcs arc Jlca3umL 

"TTT E measure the magnitude of the evils which human beings endure 
* » by their position in the scale of society ; and misfortunes which 
private persons would be expected to bear without excessive complaining, 
furnish matter for the lamentation of ages when they touch the sacred head 
which has been circled with a diadem. 






Gents from Froude. 13 



pifticttltics in % fflaii ojf ^tmlcr£famlittg l|i?torir> 

THE SCOTS. 

"TTTHOEYER has attended but a little to the phenomena of human na- 
* ' ture, has discovered how inadequate is the clearest insight which he 
can hope to attain into character and disposition. Every one is a perplexity 
to himself and a perplexity to his neighbors ; and men who are born in 
the same generation, who are exposed to the same influences, trained by the 
same teachers, and live from childhood to age in constant and familiar inter- 
course, are often little more than shadows to each other, intelligible in super- 
ficial form and outline, but divided inwardly by impalpable and mysterious 
barriers. 

And if fi'om these whom we daily meet, whose features are before our 
eyes, and whose minds we can probe with questions, we are nevertheless 
thus separated, how are the difficulties of the understanding increased when 
we are looking back from another age, with no better assistance than books, 
upon men who played their parts upon the earth under other outward cir- 
cumstances, with other beliefs, other habits, other modes of thought, other 
principles of judgment ! We see beings like ourselves, and yet different 
from ourselves. Here they are acting upon motives which we comprehend ; 
there, though we try as we will, no feeling will answer in unison. The 
same actions which at one time are an evidence of inhumanity may arise in 
another out of mercy and benevolence. Laws which, in the simpler stages 
of society, are rational and useful, become mischievous when the problem 
which they were meant to solve has been complicated by new elements. 
And as the old man forgets his childhood — as the grown man and the youth 
rarely comprehend each other — as the Englishman and the Frenchman, with 
the same reasoning faculties, do not reason to the same conclusions — so is 
the past a perplexity to the present ; it lies behind us as an enigma, easy 
only to the vain and unthinking, and only half solved after the most earnest 
efforts of intellectual spmpathy, alike in those who read and those who 
write. 

Such an effort of sympathy, the strongest which can be made, I have now 
to demand on behalf of Scotland, that marvellous country, so fertile in 
genius and chivalry, so fertile in madness and crime ; where the highest 
heroism co-existed with preternatural ferocity, yet. where the vices were 
the vices of strength, and the one virtue of indomitable courage was found 




d^g 



@ 




Gems from Fronde. 



alike in saint and sinner. Often the course of history will turn aside from 
the broad river of English life to where tbe torrents are leaping, passion- 
swollen, down from the northern hills. It will open out many a scene 
of crime and terror ; and again, from time to time, it will lead us up into 
the keen air, where the pleasant mountain breezes are blowing, and the blue 
sky is smiling cheerily. But turn where it may in the story of Scotland, 
weakness is nowhere ; power, energy, and will are everywhere. Sterile as 
is the landscape when it will first unfold itself, we shall watch the current 
winding its way with expanding force and features of enlarging magnifi- 
cence, till at length the rocks and rapids will have passed — the stream will 
have glided down into the plain to the meeting of the waters, from which, 
as from a new fountain, the united fortunes of Great Britain flow on to 
their unknown destiny. 



fflkit Character of a Skua* itqjcmls xtjroi^ the point 
from ivhicjt it in WitwtA. 

f F^HERE are many scenes in human life which, as a great prophet teaches 
-*- us, are either sad or beautiful, cheerless or refreshing, according to the 
direction from which we approach ' them. If, on a morning in spring, we 
behold the ridges of a fresh-turned plowed field from their northern side, 
our eyes, catching only the shadowed slopes of the successive furrows, see 
an expanse of white, the unmelted remains of the night's hailstorm, or the 
hoarfrost of the dawn. We make a circuit, or we cross over and look be- 
hind us, and on the very same ground there is nothing to be seen but the 
rich brown soil swelling in the sunshine, warm with promise, and chequered 
perhaps with a green blade bursting through the surface. Both images are 
true to the facts of nature. Both pictures are created by real objects really 
existing. The pleasant certainty, however, remains with us, that the winter 
is passing away and the summer is coming ; the promise of the future is not 
with the ice and the sleet, but with the sunshine, with gladness, and hope. 

.^l~ •.•;••- ' :- - : :''J\:^^-^}f.^^>- 





Gems from Froude. 




4J{imUi[ off Bartthg* 

Tl^HE murder of Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, is one of those incidents 
-*- which will remain till the end of time conspicuous on the page of his- 
tory. In itself the death of a single boy, prince or king though he might 
be, had little in it to startle the hard world of the sixteenth century. Even 
before the folly and falsehood by which Mary Stuart's husband had earned 
the hatred of the Scotch nobility, it had been foreseen that such a frail and 
giddy summer pleasure-boat would be soon wrecked in those stormy waters. 
Had Darnley been stabbed in a scuffle or helped to death by a dose of arsenic 
in his bed, the fair fame of the Queen of Scots would have suffered little, 
and the tongues that dared to mutter would have been easily silenced. But 
conspiracies in Scotland were never managed with the skillful villany of the 
Continent ; and when some conspicuous person was to be removed out of 
the way, the instruments of the deed were either fanatic religionists, who 
looked upon themselves as the servants of God, or else they had been 
wrought up to the murder point by some personal passion which was not 
contented with the death of its victim, and required a fuller satisfaction in 
the picturesqueness of dramatic revenge. The circumstances under which 
the obstacle to Mary Stuart's peace was disposed of challenged the attention 
of the whole civilized world, and no after-efforts availed in court, creed, or 
nation, to hide the memory of the scenes which were revealed on that sud- 
den liu-htnino:-flash. 



<fltc Spaniard^ 

~T> EFORE the sixteenth century had measured half its course, the shadow 
-■— ' of Spain already stretched beyond the Andes ; from the mines of Peru 
and the custom-houses of Antwerp the golden rivers streamed into her im- 
perial treasury; the crowns of Arragon and Castile, of Burgundy, Milan, 
Naples, and Sicily, clustered on the brow of her sovereigns ; and the Span- 
iards themselves, before their national liberties were broken, were beyond 
comparison the noblest, grandest, and most enlightened people in the known 
world. 






Gems from Fronde. 



Catholics ami protystante alita ^|croic* 

HERE, therefore, we are to enter upon one of the grand scenes of his- 
tory, a solemn battle fought out to the death, yet fought without 
ferocity, by the champions of rival principles. Heroic men had fallen, and 
were still fast falling, for what was called heresy ; and now those who had 
inflicted death on others, were called upon to bear the same witness to their 
own sincerity. England became the theatre of a war between two armies 
of martyrs, to be waged, not upon the open field, in open action, but at 
the stake and on the scaffold, with the nobler weapons of passive endur- 
ance. Each party were ready to give their blood ; each party were ready 
to shed the blood of their antagonists ; and the sword was to single out its 
victim in the rival ranks, not as in peace among those whose crimes made 
them dangerous to society, but, as on the field of battle, where the most 
conspicuous courage most challenges the aim of the enemy. It was war, 
though under the form of peace ; and if we would understand the true 
spirit of the time, we must regard Catholics and Protestants as gallant sol- 
diers, whose deaths, when they fall, are not painful, but glorious ; and whose 
devotion we are equally able to admire, even where we cannot equally 
approve their cause. Courage and self-sacrifice are beautiful alike in an 
enemy and in a friend. And while we exult in that chivalry with which 
the Smithfield martyrs bought England's freedom with their blood, so we 
will not refuse our admiration to those other gallant men whose high forms, 
in the sunset of the old faith, stand transfigured on the horizon, tinged with 
the light of its dying glory. 



Columbus am l ^EojJtfnti^us* 

A REVOLUTION had passed over England of which the religious change 
-*--*- was only a single feature. New avenues of thought were opening on 
all sides with the growth of knowledge ; and as the discoveries of Columbus 
and Copernicus made their way into men's minds, they found themselves, 
not in any metaphor but in plain and literal prose, in a new heaven and a 
new earth. 





Gems from Fronde. 




3|xccnftcnL of J^jiru ^uecu off §>cois. 

ri^HE end had come. She had long professed to expect it, but the clear- 
-*- est expectation is not certainty. The scene for which she had affected 
to prepare she was to encounter in its dread reality, and all her busy schemes, 
her dreams of vengeance, her visions of revolution, with herself ascending 
out of the convulsion and seating herself on her rival's throne — all were 
gone. She had played deep, and the dice had gone against her. 

Her last night was a busy one. As she said herself, there was much to 
be done and the time was short. A few lines to the King of France were 
dated two hours after midnight. They were to insist, for the last time, that 
she was innocent of the conspiracy, that she was dying for religion, and for 
having asserted her right to the crown ; and to beg that out of the sum 
which he owed her, her servants 1 wages might be paid, and masses provided 
for her soul. After this she slept for three or four hours, then rose and 
with the most elaborate care prepared to encounter her end. 

At eight in the morning the Provost-Marshal knocked at the outer door 
which communicated with her suite of apartments. It was locked and no 
one answered, and he went back in some trepidation lest the fears might 
prove true which had been entertained the preceding evening. On his 
returning with the sheriff, however, a few minutes later, the door was open, 
and they were confronted with the tall, majestic figure of Mary Stuart stand- 
ing before them in splendor. The plain grey dress had been exchanged for 
a robe of black satin ; her jacket was of black satin also, looped and slashed 
and trimmed with velvet. Her false hair was arranged studiously with a 
coif, and over her head and falling down over her back was a white veil of 
delicate lawn. A crucifix of gold hung from her neck. In her hand she 
held a crucifix of ivory, and a number of jewelled Paternosters was attach- 
ed to her girdle. Led by two of Pauleys gentlemen, the sheriff walking 
before her, she passed to the chamber of presence in which she had been 
tried, where Shrewsbury, Kent, Paulet, Drury and others were waiting to 
receive her. Andrew Melville, Sir Robert's brother, who had been master 
of her household, was kneeling in tears. " Melville," she said, " you should 
rather rejoice than weep that the end of my troubles is come. Tell my 
friends I die a true Catholic. Commend me to my son. Tell him I have 
done nothing to prejudice his Kingdom of Scotland; and so, good Mel- 
ville, farewell." She kissed him, and turning, asked for her chaplain. 





■i 8 Gems from Fr ovule. 



" Let us go," she then said, and passing out attended by the Earls, and 
leaning on the arm of an officer of the guard, she descended the great stair- 
case to the hall. The news had spread far through the Country. Thousands 
of people were collected outside the walls. About three hundred knights 
and gentlemen of the county had been admitted to witness the execution. 
The tables and forms had been removed, and a great wood fire was blazing 
in the chimney. At the upper end of the hall, above the fireplace, but near 
it, stood the scaffold, twelve feet square and two feet and a half high. It 
was covered with black cloth ; a low rail ran round it covered with black 
cloth also, and the sheriffs guard of halberdiers were ranged on the floor 
below on the four sides to keep off the crowd. On the scaffold was the 
block, black like the rest ; a square black cushion was placed behind it, and 
behind the cushion a black chair ; on the right were two other chairs for the 
Earls. The axe leant against the rail, and two masked figures stood like 
mutes on either side at the back. The Queen of Scots, as she swept in, 
seemed as if coming to take part in some solemn pageant. Not a muscle of 
her face could be seen to quiver ; she ascended the scaffold with absolute 
composure, looked round her smiling and sate down. Shrewsbury and Kent 
followed and took their places, the sheriff stood at her left hand, and Beale 
then mounted a platform and read the warrant aloud. 

In all the assembly Mary Stuart appeared the 'person least interested in 
the words which were consigning her to death. 

" Madam." said Lord Shrewsbury to her when the reading was ended, 
" you hear what we are commanded to do." 

"You will do your duty," she answered, and rose as if to kneel and pray. 
****** 

She laid her crucifix on her chair. The chief executioner took it as a 
perquisite, but was ordered instantly to lay it down. The lawn veil was 
lifted carefully off, not to disturb the hair, and was hung upon the rail. The 
black robe was next removed. Below it was a petticoat of crimson velvet. 
The black jacket followed, and under the jacket was a body of crimson 
satin. One of her ladies handed her a pair of crimson sleeves, with which 
she hastily covered her arms ; and thus she stood on the black scaffold with 
the black figures all around her, blood-red from head to foot. 

Her reasons for adopting so extraordinary a costume must be left to con- 
jecture. It is only certain that it must have been carefully studied, and that 
the pictorial effect must have been appalling. 



jg^ g^ 



*® 




Gems from Froude. 




The women, whose firmness had hitherto borne the trial, began now to 
give way, spasmodic sobs bursting from them which they could not check. 
" Ne crier vous," she said, "j'ay prornis pour vous." Struggling bravely, 
they crossed their breasts again and again, she crossing them in turn and 
bidding them pray for her. Then she knelt on the cushion. Barbara 
Mowbray bound her eyes with a handkerchief. "Adieu," she said, smiling for 
the last time and waiving her hand to them, "adieu, au revoir." They step- 
ped back from off the scaffold and left her alone. On her knees she repeated 
the Psalm, In te, Domine, confido, " In thee, Lord, have I put my trust." 

When the Psalm was finished she felt for the block, and laying down her 
head muttered: "In manus, Domine tuas, commendo animam meam." 
The hard wood seemed to hurt, for she placed her hands under her neck ; 
the executioners gently removed them, lest they should deaden the blow, 
and then one of them holding her slightly, the other raised the axe and 
struck. The scene had been too trying even for the practiced headsman of 
the Tower. His arm wandered. The blow fell on the knot of the handker- 
chief, and scarcely broke the skin. She neither spoke nor moved. He 
struck again, this time effectively. The head hung by a shred of skin, which 
he divided without withdrawing the axe ; and at once a metamorphosis was 
witnessed, strange as was ever wrought by wand of fabled enchanter. The 
coif fell off and the false plaits— the labored illusion, vanished. The lady 
who had knelt before the block was in the maturity of grace and loveliness ; 
the executioner, when he raised the head, as usual, to show it to the crowd, 
exposed the withered features of a grizzled, wrinkled old woman. 




"$*** <!W'l %*»*" 

BUT for a moment the past was forgotten in the present. The bells 
which six years before had rung in triumph for Mary's accession, now 
pealed as merrily for her death. The voices which had shouted themselves 
hoarse in execrations on Northumberland were now as loud in ecstacy that 
the miserable reign was at an end. Through the November day steeple 
answered to steeple ; the streets were spread with tables, and as the twilight 
closed, blazed as before with bonfires. The black domain of priests and 
priestcraft had rolled away like night before the coming of the dawn. Eliza- 
beth, the people's idol, dear to them for her sister's hatred, the morning star 
of England's hope, was Queen. 





2o Gems from Froude. 




^European, iloacr« \% iht r$iftetnt\ 4$,$ntvLV&. 

npHOSE who believe that human actions obey the Jaws of natural caus- 
-*- ation, might find their philosophy confirmed by the conduct of the 
great powers of Europe during the early years of the Reformation. With 
a regularity as uniform as that on which we calculate in the application of 
mechanical forces, the same combinations were attended with identical 
effects ; and given the relations between France and Spain, between Spain 
and Germany, between England and either of the three,, the political situa- 
tion of all Western Christendom could be estimated with as much certainty 
as the figure and dimensions of a triangle from the length of one of its 
sides and the inclination of two of its angles. 

When England was making advances towards the Luthei-ans, we are sure 
that France and Spain were in conjunction under the Papacy, and were 
menacing the Reformation. When such advances had been pushed forward 
into prominence, and there was a likelihood of a Protestant league, the 
Emperor was compelled to neutralize the danger by concessions to the Ger- 
man Diet, or by an affectation of a desire for a reconciliation with Henry, 
to which Henry was always ready to listen. Then Henry would look coldly 
on the Protestants, and the Protestants on him. Then Charles could afford 
again to lay the curb on Francis. Then Francis would again storm and 
threaten, till passion broke into war. War brought its usual consequences 
of mutual injury, disaster and exhaustion ; and then the Pope would inter- 
fere, and peace would follow, and the same round would repeat itself. 
Statesmen and kings made, as they imagined, their fine strokes of policy. 
A wisdom other than theirs condemned them to tread again and again the 
same ineffectual circle. 



tk irisli,. 



O ADDER history in the compass of the world's great chronicle there is 
^ none than the history of the Irish : so courageous, yet so like cow- 
ards ; so interesting, yet so resolute to forfeit all honorable claims to 
interest. In thinking of them, we can but shake our heads with Lord 
Chancellor Audeley, when meditating on this rebellion, and repeat after 
him, " they be a people of strange nature, and of much inconstancy." 





Gems from Froude. 




Il&eijittioti, anil Character ojf fht S«M c»f[ Somerset* 

rTlIIE English public, often wildly wrong on general questions, are good 
-*- judges, for the most part, of personal character ; and so passionately 
was Somerset loved, that those who were nearest the scaffold started forward 
to dip their handkerchiefs, in his blood. His errors were forgotten in the 
tragedy of his end ; and the historian who in his life found much to cen- 
sure, who, had he recovered his Protectorate, would, perhaps, have been 
obliged to repeat the same story of authority unwisely caught at and un- 
wisely used, can find but good words only for the victim of the treachery of 
Northumberland . 

In revolutions, the most excellent things are found ever in connection 
with the most base. The enthusiast for the improvement of mankind works 
side by side with the adventurer, to whom change is welcome, that he may 
better his fortune in the scramble : and thus it is that patriots and religious 
reformers show in fairest colors when their cause is ungained, when they 
are a struggling minority chiefly called upon to suffer. Gold and silver 
will not answer for the purposes of a currency till they are hardened with 
some interfusion of coarser metal ; and truth and justice, when they have 
forced their way to power, make a compromise with the world, and accept 
some portion of the world's spirit as the price at which they may exercise 
their ever-limited dominion. So it is at the best : too often, as the devil 
loves most to mar the fairest works, the good, when success is gained, are 
pushed aside as dreamers, or used only as a shield for the bad deeds of their 
confederates; they are happy if their own nature escape infection from the 
instruments which they use, and from the elements in which they are com- 
pelled to work. 



Clijjicultii 1% ^fudging ^tatcsmc^ ifmjjarttalljj* 

TN contemplating the false steps of statesmen, it is difficult at all times to 
- 1 - measure their responsibility, to determine how much of their errors has 
been due to party spirit, how much to pardonable mistake ; how much, 
again, seems to have been faulty, because we see but effects, which we as- 
cribe absolutely to the conduct of particular men, when such effects were the 
result, in fact, of influences spreading throughout the whole circle of society. 



22 Gems from Froude. 



ijwant fCfifttfit^ter of; |11ijlip< 



WHATEVER Philip of Spain was entering upon, whether it was a 
marriage or a massacre, a state intrigue or a midnight murder, his 
opening step w r as ever to seek a blessing from the holy wafer. 



%\**h M]? v m* 



~^T English Sovereign ever ascended the throne with larger popularity 
-L-^ than Mary Tudor. The country was eager to atone to her for her 
mother's injuries ; and the instinctive loyalty of the English towards their 
natural sovereign was enhanced by the abortive efforts of Northumberland 
to rob her of her inheritance. She had reigned little more than five years, 
and she descended into the grave amidst curses deeper than the acclamations 
which had welcomed her accession. In that brief time she had swathed her 
name in the horrid epithet which will cling to it forever ; and yet from the 
passions which in general tempt sovereigns into crime, she was entirely free ; 
to the time of her accession she had lived a blameless, and, in many respects, 
a noble life ; and few men or women have lived less capable of doing know- 
ingly a wrong thing. 




|{cvolutiouari| Characters* 

"T3ERIODS of revolution bring out and develop extraordinary characters ; 
-■- they produce saints and heroes, and they produce also fanatics, and 
fools, and villains ; but they are unfavorable to the actions of average con- 
scientious men, and to the application of the plain principles of right and 
wrong to every-day life. Common men at such times see all things chang- 
ing round them,— institutions falling to ruin, religious truth no longer an 
awful and undisputed reality, but an opinion shifting from hour to hour ; 
and they are apt to think that, after all, interest is the best object for which 
to live, and that in the general scramble those are the wisest who best take 
care of themselves. 



~®% 




Gems from Fronde. 




^lic ^armijr ami the ^vx. 



A FARMER, whose poultry-yard had suffered severely from the foxes, 
-*"*- succeeded at last in catching one in a trap. "Ah, you rascal!" said 
he, as he saw him struggling, " I'll teach you to steal my fat geese ! — you 
shall hang on the tree yonder, and your brothers shall see what comes of 
thieving ! " The Farmer was twisting a halter to do what he threatened, 
when the Fox, whose tongue had helped him in hard pinches before, thought 
there could be no harm in trying whether it might not do him one more 
good turn. 

" You will hang me," he said, " to frighten my brother foxes. On the 
word of a fox they won't care a rabbit-skin for it ; they'll come and look at 
me ; but you may depend upon it, they will dine at your expense before 
they go home again ! " 

"Then I shall hang you for yourself, as a rogue and a rascal," said the 
Farmer. 

" I am only what Nature, or whatever you call the thing, chose to make 
me," the Fox answered. " I did n't make myself." 

" You stole my geese," said the man. 

" Why did Nature make me like geese, then ? " said the Fox. " Live and 
let live ; give me my share, and I won't touch yours : but you keep them 
all to yourself." 

" I don't understand your fine talk," answered the Farmer ; " but I know 
that you are a thief, and that you deserve to be hanged." 

His head is too thick to let me catch him so, thought the Fox ; I wonder 
if his heart is any softer ! " You are taking away the life of a fellow- 
creature," he said; " that's a responsibility — it is a curious thing, that life, 
and who knows what comes after it ? You say I am a rogue — I say I am 
not ; but at any rate I ought not to be hanged — for if I am not, I don't 
deserve it ; and if I am, you should give me time to repent ! " I have him 
now, thought the Fox ; let him get out of it if he can. 

" Why, what would you have me do with you ? " said the man. 

" My notion is that you should let me go, and give me a lamb, or goose 
or two, every month, and then I could live without stealing ; but perhaps 
vou know better than me, and I am a rogue ; my education may have been 






Gents from Froude. 



neglected ; you should shut me up, and take care of me, and teach me. 
Who knows but in the end I may turn into a dog ? " 

" Very pretty," said the Farmer ; "we have dogs enough, and more, too, 
than we can take care of, without you. No, no, Master Fox, I have caught 
you, and you shall swing, whatever is the logic of it. There will be one 
rogue less in the world, anyhow." 

" It is mere hate and unchristian vengeance," said the Fox. 

" No, friend," the Farmer answered ; " I don't hate you, and I don't want 
to revenge myself on you ; but you and I can't get on together, and I think 
I am of more importance than you. If nettles and thistles grow in my 
cabbage-garden, I don't try to persuade them to grow into cabbages. I just 
dig them up. I don't hate them ; but I feel somehow that they must n't 
hinder me with my cabbages, and that I must put them away ; and so, my 
poor friend, I am sorry for you, but I am afraid you must swing ! " 



tyht ¥ions ami fl» jfyxtn* 

ONCE upon a time a number of cattle came out of the desert to settle 
in the broad meadows by a river. They were poor and wretched, and 
they found it a pleasant exchange, — except for a number of lions, who lived 
in the mountains near, and who claimed a right, in consideration of permit- 
ting the cattle to remain, to eat as many as they wanted among them. The 
cattle submitted, partly because they were too weak to help it, partly because 
the lions said it was the will of Jupiter ; and the cattle believed them. And 
so they went on for many ages, till at last, from better feeding, the cattle 
grew larger and stronger, and multiplied into great numbers ; and at the 
same time, from other causes, the lions had much diminished ; they were 
fewer, smaller, and meaner looking than they had been ; and except in their 
own opinion of themselves, and in their appetites, there was nothing of the 
old lion left in them. 

One day a large ox was quietly grazing, when one of these lions came 
up, and desired the Ox to lie down, for he wanted to eat him. The Ox 
raised his head, and gravely protested ; the Lion growled ; the Ox was mild, 
yet firm. The Lion insisted upon his legal right, and they agreed to refer 
the matter to Minos. 



^@- 





Gents front Froude. 25 



When they came into court, the Lion accused the Ox of having broken 
the laws of the beasts. The Lion was king, and the others were bound to 
obey. Prescriptive usage was clearly on the Lion's side. Minos called on 
the Ox for his defense. 

The Ox said that, without consent of his own being asked, he had been 
born into the meadow. He did not consider himself much of a beast, but, 
such as he was, he was very happy, and gave Jupiter thanks. Now, if the 
Lion could show that the existence of lions was of more importance than 
that of oxen in the eyes of Jupiter, he had nothing more to say ; he was 
ready to sacrifice himself. But this Lion had already eaten a thousand oxen. 
Lions' appetites were so insatiable that he was forced to ask whether they 
were really worth what was done for them, — whether the life of one lion 
was so noble that the lives of thousands of oxen were not equal to it ? He 
was ready to own that lions had always eaten oxen, but lions when they first 
came to the meadow were a different sort of creature, and they them- 
selves, too (and the Ox looked complacently at himself), had improved since 
that time. Judging by appearances, though they might be fallacious, he 
himself was quite as good a beast as the Lion. If the lions would lead lives 
more noble than oxen could live, once more he would not complain. As it 
was, he submitted that the cost was too great. 

Then the Lion put on a grand face and tried to roar ; but when he opened 
his mouth he disclosed a jaw so drearily furnished that Minos laughed, and 
told the Ox that it was his own fault if he let himself be eaten by such a 
beast as that. If he persisted in declining, he did not think the Lion would 
force him. 



M,om$tn$aiimi. 



OXE day an Antelope was lying with her fawn at the foot of the flower- 
ing Mimosa. The weather was intensely sultry, and a Dove, who had 
sought shelter from the heat among the leaves, was cooing above her head. 
'' Happy bird ! " said the Antelope. " Happy bird ! to whom the air is 
given for an inheritance, and whose flight is swifter than the wind. At your 
will you alight upon the ground, at your will you sweep into the sky, and 






Gems from Froude. 




fly races with the driving clouds ; while I, poor I, am bound prisoner to this 
miserable earth, and wear out my pitiable life crawling to and fro upon its 
surface." 

Then the Dove answered, "It is sweet to sail along the sky, to fly from 
land to land, and coo among the valleys ; but, Antelope, when I have sat 
above amidst the branches and watched your little one close its tiny lips 
upon your breast, and feed its life on yours, I have felt that I could strip off 
my wings, lay down my plumage, and remain all my life upon the ground 
only once to know such blessed enjoyment.'' 1 

The breeze sighed among the boughs of the Mimosa, and a voice came 
trembling out of the rustling leaves : " If the Antelope mourns her destiny, 
what should the Mimosa do '? The Antelope is the swiftest among the ani- 
mals. It rises in the morning ; the ground flies under its feet — in the eve- 
ning it is a hundred miles away. The Mimosa is feeding its old age on the 
same soil which quickened its seed-cell into activity. The seasons roll by 
me and leave me in the old place. The winds sway among my branches, as 
if they longed to bear me away with them, but they pass on and leave me 
behind. The wild birds come and go. The flocks move by me in the eve- 
ning on their way to the pleasant waters. I can never move. My cradle 
must be my grave." 

Then from below, at the root of the tree, came a voice which neither bird, 
nor antelope, nor tree had ever heard, as a Rock Crystal from its prison in 
the limestone followed on the words of the Mimosa. 

" Are ye all unhappy ? " it said. ' l If ye are, then what am I ? Ye all 
have life. You ! Mimosa, you ! whose fair flowers year by year come 
again to you, ever young, and fresh, and beautiful — you who can drink the 
rain with your leaves, who can wanton with the summer breeze, and open 
your breast to give a home to the wild birds, look at me and be ashamed. 
I only am truly wretched ! " 

" Alas ! " said the Mimosa, " we have life, which you have not, it is true. 
We have also what you have not, its shadow — death. My beautiful child- 
ren, which year by year I bring out into being, expand in their loveliness 
only to die. Where they are gone I too shall soon follow, while you will 
flash in the light of the last sun which rises upon the earth/' 






020 708 894 I 



